Peace in war is an incongruity. Foes in the midst of battle
cannot well be friends. Where the pressure of conflicting forces
is intensest there is little opportunity of reconciliation. Yet
this absurdity and contradiction we find in the odious and
repulsive attempt to unite Liberalism with Catholicism. The
monstrosity resulting is what is known as the Liberal Catholic or
the (36) Catholic Liberal. Strange as it may seem, Catholics with
good intentions have paid tribute to this absurdity and indulged
the vain hope of peace with the eternal enemy.

This fatal error has its source in the vain and exaggerated
desire of reconciling and harmonizing in peace doctrines utterly
incompatible and hostile by their very nature.

Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute
independence of the individual and of the social reason.
Catholicity is the dogma of the absolute subjection of the
individual and of the social order to the revealed law of God.
One doctrine is the exact antithesis of the other. They are
opposites in direct conflict. How is it possible to reconcile
them? Opposition here necessarily means conflict, and the two can
no more harmonize than the square can be made one with the
circle.

To the promoters of Catholic Liberalism the thing appears easy
enough. "It is admirable," they say, "for the
individual reason to be subject to the law of God if it so
wishes, but we must distinguish between the public and the
private reason, especially in an age like ours. The modern State
does not recognize God or the Church. In the conflict of
different religious creeds the public reason must stand neutral
and impartial. Hence the necessary independence (37) of the
public reason. The State as State can have no religion. Let the
simple citizen if he wishes, submit to the revelation of Jesus
Christ, but the statesman and the man in public life must comport
himself as if no revelation existed." Now all this means
civil or social atheism. It means that society is independent of
God, its Author; that while individuals may recognize their
dependence on the divine law, civil society should not; a
distinction whose sophism is founded on an intolerable
contradiction.

It is clear that if the individual reason is obliged to submit
to the law of God, the public and the social reason cannot
logically escape the same duty without falling into an
extravagant dualism, by virtue of which men would be forced to
submit to the law of two contrary and opposed consciences.
Privately men would have to be Christian, publicly men would have
to be free to be atheistic. Furthermore the road is open to an
odious tyranny; for if the public conscience were independent of
the Christian law and ignored it, there would be no public
recognition of the obligation to protect the Church by the civil
arm in the exercise of her rights. Nay, more; the civil power
would readily become the means of persecution, the rulers hostile
to the Church, condemning divine law, could actually, under (38)
cover of authority, legislate against Christianity. Nor is this a
fanciful picture, for France and Italy, legislating today on the
basis of the sovereign independence of the social and public
reason have enacted odious laws which hold the Church in those
countries in distressful legal bondage. And the Holy Father
himself is now a prisoner within the walls of the Vatican on
account of the violent usurpation of his domains by an atheist
government. But the results of the fatal distinction does not
stop with the functions of legislation and administration
subjecting the Church to social and civil persecution; in modern
times it has gone further still and extends its baneful influence
to the school room, propagating itself by placing the education
of youth under its dominating influence. It forms the conscience
of youth not according to the divine law which acknowledges the
will of God, but upon a premeditated and careful ignorance of
that law. It is as secular education that it seizes upon the
future and breeds atheism in the hearts of the coming
generations.

The Catholic Liberalist or the Liberal Catholic admitting the
fatal distinction between the private and the public reason, thus
throws open the gates to the enemies of the faith, and, posing as
a man of (39) intellect with generous and liberal views,
stultifies reason by his gross offense against the principle of
contradiction. He is thus both a traitor and a fool. Seeking to
please the enemies of the faith he has betrayed his trust, the
faith itself; imagining he is upholding the rights of reason, he
surrenders it in the most abject way to the spirit of denial, the
spirit of untruth. He has not the courage to withstand the
derision of his cunning foe. To be called intolerant, illiberal,
narrow, Ultramontane, reactionist, is gall and wormwood to his
little soul. Under this epithetical fire he gives way and
surrenders his birthright of faith and reason for a mess of
Liberal pottage.